The First International Conference on the Legal Histories of the British Empire will be held in Singapore from July 5-7, 2012. The Faculty of Law at the National University of Singapore is the local host.

The Conference is supported by the American Society of Legal History, the Australian and New Zealand Legal History Association, the Forbes Society for Australian Legal History and the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History.

The Conference is designed to provide a vehicle for a wide ranging sample of current scholarship on imperial and colonial legal history – cultural, institutional, social, biographical, doctrinal, prosopographical and theoretical. The objectives are:

(1) to bring together scholars (senior, junior and graduate students) working in the fields of imperial and comparative colonial legal history, to share the work that is already underway, and (2) to encourage those with an incipient interest in these fields and others to join in this scholarly endeavour and expand the field.

Without in any way limiting the range of topics considered at the Conference, the following are just some areas of contemporary and comparative research interest:

the treatment of Aboriginal and Indigenous populations; property rights; the treatment of the unfree - slaves and convicts; the administration of justice and the rule of law; constitutional evolution; the colonial judiciary; the legal professions; the transference of legal culture and ideology within the Empire; master and servant law; regulation of labour, labour movement and indenture; crime and criminal justice; formal and informal resolution of private disputes; law and economic development; the law and gender; women’s rights; the law of libel and press freedom; discrimination against ethnic majorities and minorities; martial law in colonial settings; internal security of the colonial state.

This Call for Papers invites submissions for both papers and panels. Submissions of papers should be accompanied by an abstract of 300 words maximum in length and sent to Dr. David Williams, Faculty of Law, University of Auckland (dv.williams@auckland.ac.nz), cc. Professor John McLaren, Faculty of Law University of Victoria, British Columbia (jmclaren@uvic.ca). The deadline for submissions is June 30, 2011. General inquiries about the Conference should be addressed to Professor McLaren.

The Organizing Committee for the Conference is: Shaunnagh Dorsett (University of Technology, Sydney, New South Wales); Andrew Harding (University of Victoria, British Columbia), Renisa Mawani (University of British Columbia); John McLaren (University of Victoria, British Columbia); Jothie Rajah (Berkeley, University of California); Wes Pue, (University of British Columbia); Carol Tan (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London); Kevin Tan (National University of Singapore and heritage consultant); David Williams (University of Auckland).